


The angels strike again

by bluebutch



Category: Motherland: Fort Salem (TV)
Genre: F/F, just wanted to give my girls some love, soft raylla!!, supportive gf scylla
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebutch/pseuds/bluebutch
Summary: Raelle can't sleep. Not with the storms that rage like battles outside her window.
Relationships: Raelle Collar/Scylla Ramshorn
Comments: 13
Kudos: 174





	The angels strike again

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all! This is my first time posting a fic. Leave a comment and let me know what you think! :)

Black clouds roll outside Raelle's bedroom windows, dark with lightning and brimming with powerful thunder. The large windows that line her room allow the bright flashes to bounce around her room. With each flash and boom, Raelle feels a slight shiver run down her spine. Anxiety courses through her, adrenaline causing her heart rate to elevate to an irregular beat. She can feel how hard it beats in her chest. It's almost as if her heart is trying to escape to find shelter in a new body, inside a chest that doesn't twitch with fear.

Lightning flashes, bright light splashing against the walls, and Raelle counts out loud. "One. Two. Three." Perfectly in time with her counting, a deep boom resonates throughout the room. Raelle thinks she can feel the 'boom' in her bones, attempting to suppress the shivering that continues to wrack her body. Her mom used to tell her that the thunder was just the angels bowling. Now that she was older, she knew it was just nature, but that thought doesn't soothe her anxiety.

As far back as Raelle can remember, she had always been afraid of storms. Her phobia hadn't stopped when her mom died. If anything, it was exacerbated by her absence. She had stopped sleeping in her mom's room during storms years before her death, but the idea of no longer having the possibility of her mom's arms wrapped around her as the sky let its sorrows fall onto the ground was more than anxiety-inducing.

For a moment, the storm feels as though it is a personal punishment from Mother Nature herself. Why that would be, Raelle didn't know. All she knew was that she was sweaty and exhausted, and she just wanted a few hours of peace so that she could sleep. It had been storming on the base for days now, and the dark clouds had shown no signs of letting up any time soon. Raelle had been fidgety ever since they started, her anxiety causing her to become like a ticking time bomb. She couldn't handle the constant state of nervousness that she was perpetually stuck in. Anger and annoyance had fueled her actions for the last week, and she knew it was becoming evident to her unit.

The booming thunder continues to cause adrenaline to crash through her body in waves. Raelle hates the way her body shudders with every crack of thunder. It makes her feel weak. She finds herself longing for her mother, for the safety her arms had always granted her as a child during the worst storms. The storms on base weren't nearly as destructive as the ones back in the Cession, but Raelle no longer had her mother to reassure her that the angels were simply playing.

Mind wandering aimlessly in an attempt to distract herself, she begins to wonder if it stormed on the beach while her mother fought for her life. Did her unit summon a storm to protect her? Did they fight until the end? Why did her mom die after years of giving her entire life to the military?

Why did she have to leave Raelle?

The angels bowl, and the sky rumbles as the balls strike the pins.

Raelle thinks that last one could've been a strike.

"Hey, you," Scylla's voice breaks Raelle's concentration on the windows. The war waging in the sky must've finally woken her up. That, or Raelle's fidgeting. "What're you doing awake?"

"The uh, the storms woke me." She lies. Raelle hadn't slept in days because of the storms.

Her girlfriend studies her face, and Raelle knows that Scylla is waiting for her to go on. To explain why she is laying frozen, her back dripping with sweat, her entire focus on the windows at the end of her room. Maybe she could explain the way she needed Scylla to hold her, to keep her safe. But Raelle doesn't know if that would mar the memory of her mother, or if it would mean she had turned traitor by finding shelter in another's arms.

Moments pass between the two, silence accentuated by distant rolling thunder. Raelle visibly twitches with each blast of thunder, and she knows her girlfriend has noticed her anxiety. Scylla turns onto her side, propping her head up on her arm. Raelle swears she can feel the pieces of her heart floating in the space between them, and Scylla's gaze slowly pieces her back together. Calm wages war against the anxiety rooted in her chest. Raelle looks back at Scylla, and lets herself fall head first into the never-ending galaxies that lie within her blue eyes.

"I just—I hate storms. I always have," Raelle stumbles over her words. She needs to get this out. "My mom…"

The words die in her mouth as the brightest flash yet rips through the room, illuminating Scylla's soft features. Her girlfriend's face brings her a breath of fresh air before she begins her countdown.

_One._

_Two._

_Three._

Raelle’s heart beats irregularly when the thunder reaches her ears. Her shaking worsens, and she shuts her eyes. Hands flying instinctively to cover her ears, Raelle attempts to quiet the noise that threatens to drown her in her own fear. It's irrational for a witch to be scared of storms, she knows, but her childhood fear still had an iron grip on her. Natural storms were terrifying, while those conjured by witches made her hardly bat an eye. It made no sense, but to Raelle it did.

Gentle hands caress her wrists, and Scylla tries to pull her hands away from her ears. Raelle cracks her eyes open. She could see Scylla's lips moving, and recognized her own name falling from her mouth, but her hands muffled the sound. Anxiety stiffened her arms, leaving them solid in their place over her ears. Eventually, Raelle realizes that the drum of thunder has calmed briefly, and lightning is no longer flashing steadily across her bed. The grip on her wrists pulls gently, but with a slight urgency, moving her hands away from her ears.

"Raelle," Scylla starts, and Raelle knows instantly what she's going to say.

"Don't. Don't say it," Her voice scrapes, as if she hadn't spoken in months. Grief turns her voice to gravel. "It's not okay, Scyl. Don't say it is."

Scylla's eyes bore into her own, and Raelle wonders if she's angered her. Her eyes flash with something that she can't quite identify. But then, her girlfriend is shaking her head as she sits up and crosses her legs.

"I get it. I really do," Scylla says instead.

"You do?"

A small grin spreads across Scylla's features, "Yeah, I think I do. They're different when they're from Mother Nature herself."

Relief consumes Raelle for a moment, cooling her heated, anxious skin. She was so lucky to have Scylla. Raelle thanked every one of her lucky stars that she was dating her. Her attention is pulled from her thoughts as Scylla cradles Raelle's hands within her own, rubbing her thumbs over them. The anxiety that grips her body ebbs a little with each pass of her thumbs.

"You were saying something about your mom?"

_Right. My mom._

"Yeah. Um, she used to… she used to hold me during storms." Raelle half expects Scylla to laugh at her, but she merely quirks an eyebrow as she keeps her attention trained on the blonde.

"Would you like me to?" Scylla asks, tone soothing as if she was talking to a wounded animal. Raelle supposes that in that instant she felt like one.

"Like you to what?"

"Hold you." _Like your mom used to._ The unsaid words pass between them, two simple syllables like dropping bombs.

Raelle doesn't expect her grief to hit her as hard as it does. Memories begin to flood her mind, and she remembers how after her mom passed, after she was blown to bits on a beach, she was forced to go see the counselor at her high school. The man had been older, with a salt and pepper beard and a scent like old cigars. His eyes had been kind, but his exterior was rough, as most things in the Cession were.

He told Raelle that grief comes in stages. Anger, depression, acceptance.  
Obviously, he had never actually experienced grief because Raelle wasn't just mad, or depressed. She was broken. Grief clutched her heart in a vice grip, threatening to kill her. It felt more like a punch to the gut than any single emotion, winding her and catching her off guard. Pain consumed her body before Raelle could even make sense of what was happening. There was no recovering from this. There was no safety, no reprieve, no light at the end of the tunnel.

Raelle had wanted to tell the man it was all bullshit. There was no cycle of grief. There was only this: a mess of emotions and a need for her mother to be alive and in one piece. Not in a mess of glass on a beach Raelle had never seen before. 

She didn’t speak a damn word to him. 

The memories in Raelle's head roar louder than the claps of thunder outside, and her head feels ready to burst with the pressure they bring. At some point, she realizes she was crying. Somewhere in the back of her head, she registers Scylla's hands falling onto her cheeks, her tears seemingly staining her hands like dark ink. The roaring dulls to a soft din, and the sharp pain of her grief fades. Raelle allows her eyes to finally open again, finding Scylla's inches away.

They are clear and unclouded, and she nearly mistakes her blue eyes for the sky. Raelle thinks that she would fly in them if Scylla let her. She knows she can find the sun, the moon, and the stars within her eyes if she searched long enough. Her whole world could be found.

Scylla wipes Raelle's tears from her cheeks in slow, methodical movements. She holds her face as if it is made from porcelain, as if she would break her if she rubbed away the salty water with too much force.

"Thank you." Raelle croaks.

Scylla offers up a smile, expression open and trusting. "I love you."

Raelle pauses briefly, gaze unwavering from Scylla. Her voice is lost somewhere between her fear and grief, and she doesn't know if she can find it again. And then, she leans into Scylla and kisses her, and her world feels at peace for a brief second. She wills her words, _I love you,_ into the kiss, hoping Scylla will realize what she means.

When they pull apart, she knows her hope was not in vain. One look at Scylla, and her hopes are confirmed. There are so many more things Raelle wants to say. Sometimes, words simply aren't enough to explain what she feels. So, she lets the silence rest between them, and pulls Scylla to her chest. They settle down into the sheets. Blankets cover them like a momentary shield from the world, and Scylla burrows her head underneath Raelle's chin.

Light flashes, thunder booms, and the angels strike again. And when Raelle shivers, Scylla squeezes her tighter and tighter until her fear has no room to stay.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


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